Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about is sharing always caring? So I'm gonna go through some different aspects of sharing and take a little look at this. I remember growing up hearing sharing is caring, and what that means is it's encouraging people to share their feelings and communicate to others about what's going on inside them. Maybe share experiences or share expertise or things like that. I think all of that is great actually. Especially it's good if people are, have a tendency to hold back and they feel afraid to communicate. I think that's great. I think that sharing is very helpful. I had a situation yesterday at work where somebody shared something and I was able to give, oh yeah, I tried that. Why don't you try this? And it was like just the right suggestion for her based on what she was sharing. That's the kind of magic of sharing, and I do think that that's wonderful when you naturally just like spontaneously share something and somebody else can contribute and cooperate and it's great. So yeah, in that case, sharing is great. For me, I had a tendency to overtalk. Maybe I wasn't very sensitive to others, maybe I wasn't a very good listener. So today I wanna explore a little bit of what's going on there when maybe I'm talking too much. Maybe I'm a little bit over excited. They have all these euphemisms, you know, I suck up all the oxygen in the room. I'm not reading the room. Stuff like that. Maybe there are people out there, some of you out there maybe have those personality traits. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. So the first one is oversharing. So I'm oversharing, I'm telling too much. I'm sharing too much of what's going on. There's a euphemism of that, like too much information. TMI, right. The person is sharing something and they're just sharing the details. So there's a lack of sensitivity to the right amount of information or the right amount of talking for that situation. It's interesting, as I'm sharing this, I'm thinking that all of these issues are really a lack of sensitivity, especially this one where you're sharing too much. Maybe you're over talking with somebody like not listening. So listening we'll talk about in a minute. But you're not sensitive to what's going on with the other person. You're not sensitive to the, to that, and you're not sensitive to the circumstances in the room. So your sharing is too much for that circumstance. So that's one thing would be oversharing. It might not all always be just you're oversharing one incident. Maybe you have a habit of sharing too much. Are you one of those people? I know I was where somebody would share something and then I would automatically share about myself. Like to relate. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. That happened to me too, and so forth. That's not necessarily wrong either. Sometimes sharing a common experience shows that the person yeah, I do understand what you're talking about, but that's also dependent on how emotional the person is. Sometimes if a person is really, really emotional, you talking about yourself, even with a good intention is not the appropriate thing to do. So it's interesting how when we share. In order for it to be the right thing or for it to be helpful, there needs to be a sensitivity to a bunch of things. The other person, their needs, maybe they need to be listened to. Maybe they do want some feedback, maybe not. So I have another example of this oversharing, and this was a pretty significant one that I remember at work. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you may have heard this one before, but I was in a meeting and I have a very active mind and I'm very organized and I, can see the whole problem and how to fix it and so forth. So I stood up in the meeting and I basically said, this is the problem. This is how to fix it. Like I, the whole thing. And it was like a mic drop. It was a complete package. There was nothing to say after I said everything. So after the meeting, my boss came up to me and said, you know, you hurt so-and-so's feelings. And I was like, what do you mean? I wasn't even, I didn't even talk to her. How could I hurt her feelings? And she said she really wanted to share something. And you didn't give her a chance. Now, at that time, I didn't understand, 'cause she said you hurt her feelings. So I was reacting to that, like I didn't hurt anybody. I'm just sitting here being myself. I didn't hurt anybody, but what she was trying to tell me is that you were not sensitive to the needs of anybody else in the room. It's funny, I've been thinking about leadership in this regard. We can have a lot of ego. This has to do with sharing and overtalking. I can have a lot of pride about what I know, and part of that is legitimate. I mean, not what I know, but maybe I worked very hard to get a degree or maybe I, I have a lot of experience and so part of that is okay, but how am I using all of that? Am I using it to help? Am I or am I steamrolling over people? I was a big steamroller. I mean, I think I got away with it only because I guess there was a sense that I'm really not trying to hurt anybody. I'm just insensitive to the needs of everybody around me. So I'm oversharing, I'm overtalking. I'm not paying attention to anybody else. I'm prideful. I have all this knowledge and whatever I accumulated and I'm dumping it into the scene. Well, yeah. Okay. Maybe people can take or maybe not, or maybe they're tolerating me. Maybe they're just like, okay, she's being herself. One thing I can say is that people are pretty tolerant. I find that people, if you're not really hurting, like aggressively hurting people or aggressively trying to be disruptive, that people have some amount of tolerance. If you're trying to grow, though, I think it's a good idea to start becoming a little more sensitive to the situation. I realized that this excess talking started to hurt me because I wasn't getting the response that I want. Like I'm putting out there this great idea and like I'm not getting the response. Oh, that's a great idea. Let's do it. I wasn't getting that. So it started to hurt. So I started to say, well, let me pull it back a little bit. Let me talk a little bit less. Let me listen a little bit more. Let me see. So I'm learning how to do that more and more, and I find that that's a lot better. To be sensitive and to be appropriate is a lot better than just over talking like the bull in the China shop. The second thing I wanted to share about is apologizing. I've talked about this a little bit maybe in the podcast before, but there's one aspect of it that I would like to talk about here. We had a class today and one of the students was saying that he recently, was reacquainted with somebody from his past and he had the urge to. Bring up the past, like maybe an apologize for something from the past. And in the class we talked about in the Karma class, we were talking about how, not saying that you should never apologize. However, if it's like 10 years later and the person says, hi, how are you? And I say, oh, remember when, blah, blah, blah. I'm so sorry. You gotta wonder, am I doing that for them or am I doing it to alleviate some kind of guilt? Am I doing it because I enjoy them listening to me or that I'm getting attention. These are subtle things that we can look at, but with apologizing, this is the thing that I think is that I'm working with. So you can think about it for yourself. If I do something that's not right, or I don't like it, or it's not the right thing. And I feel like, I wanna apologize. Apologize in the moment. Like if I realize it in the moment, apologize in the moment you're still engaged with the person, you're still in the situation. Say, oh, you know what? I'm sorry I take that back. I really didn't mean to say that that was an insensitive of me. I apologize. You're cleaning it up in the moment and the people are still engaged with you. They're still in there with you and you're saying, Nope, I don't want that. Sorry, I'm taking that out. What happens though is that maybe we don't realize what we've done during the situation, and so after the situation, I start to feel a little guilty. Ooh, I don't like, that wasn't really good what I said there, maybe I should apologize and everybody can decide for themselves, but one of the things I've noticed. Is that when I bring it up after the fact, the other person is not thinking about it. Did you ever feel really bad about something and then go up to the person that it happened with, like maybe a month later or something, and has been bothering you for a month and you've been, feeling guilty and all these feelings for a month. And then you go up to the person and you say, I'm really sorry about what I said to you a month ago. And the person's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Oh, that. That didn't bother me, and I just spent a month torturing myself because I thought it was so bad. So in terms of, is sharing caring? Sometimes apologizing under those circumstances is not very caring. Not to me and not to them. I'm bringing up something that's already passed. My suggestion within the laws of karma is to. Deal with the guilt feeling itself. And if I really don't like what I did or said, make a promise to myself that I'm never going to do it again. In our household, one of the things that we kind of live by is that we don't really apologize. You just don't do it again. You just don't do it. You don't bring it up, unless it's in the moment. But with our, with our son. One time he did something and he was like, oh, I'm sorry. And I said, if you say you're sorry, it means you're never gonna do it again. What I'm advocating for with him in that moment and with myself is this rigorous commitment to improvement. I'm definitely gonna improve. I don't wanna say I'm sorry and then do it again, or I don't want to just bring something up with somebody. So and so amount of time later just to alleviate the guilt that I've been putting on myself all that time. Think about it. Have we done that? I think it's pretty common that we think we did something wrong and then we feel really bad and then we see the person and we feel the un uncontrollable need to bring it up so that we can alleviate that feeling. But then what you're doing is you're bringing that other person in again. And maybe that's not necessary. So reading the room, be kind to yourself. People are very forgiving. Like I said, people generally are very forgiving. If you're not being overtly negative and overtly mean and overtly violent, then they're pretty forgiving. People will allow for different personality traits. I feel that it's a good idea to be vigilant with the self that you wanna keep improving. But the last thing I wanna talk about is listening, and I would like to change that slogan. Sharing is caring into listening is caring. I'm working on this now. There are some skills I know in psychology, there's all kinds of things about listening skills. You can even go on YouTube, how to listen better and so forth. I'm gonna try to give a kind of a spiritual slant on it. When I'm listening for someone, I am providing a silent environment where they are able to express and discover themselves and respond to themselves, hear themselves look at themselves. Personally, I find that talking through things for me is very helpful. Maybe this is why I do this podcast. I'm talking through it, right? But even for my own self, I talk to my husband, I talk, you know, whatever. But that talking through something is very helpful. In order to talk about something, you need somebody to listen. Do you ever try to talk to somebody and the person gets distracted and you can't talk anymore? Right. So this phenomenon of listening, it's not just about sitting still and listening to what somebody has to say. It's about creating an environment where they can express themselves. In my opinion, the greatest gift you can give to anyone is listening. Kind listening, patient listening, loving listening, understanding listening. Quiet listening. Safe listening. So all of those qualities I'm bringing forth friendly listening, right? Could be. It doesn't have to be, serious, just be friendly. But all of that listening is an invitation for the soul to express themselves. I feel like that is caring. So to recap this episode. Is sharing, caring? Well, sharing is great. I think it's very helpful. I think it's we're able to express ourselves and we're able to get solutions to problems and work things out. Great. But again, we're looking at the, some of the pitfalls. Oversharing, not being sensitive. Apologizing. Maybe you can think about that a little bit differently now that we covered it, and then of course listening and how important listening is very, very powerful. I remember. My mother and I used to have a very powerful relationship, very close relationship. She passed away several years ago, but we used to talk several times a day, and I remember listening and listening and listening. It was like, I just felt like I was giving her something, giving her a chance to express herself. I still think you need to take care of yourself. That also can get outta balance. Like if I'm listening and listening and listening for everybody, and nobody's listening for me, and I don't feel like I am taken care of, then that's not good either. Maybe you're in a situation where you're listening for a friend and they're not listening for you, but they don't have to listen for you. You can get somebody else to listen for you. It doesn't have to be like a one for one. In the last episode, we were talking about how there's no accounts and that everybody should be able to be free to be themselves at all times. So if I feel like I wanna listen for this person, then I'm gonna listen for this person, but I don't need to expect them to listen to me. But I would hope that everyone who's listening has someone that can listen for them and to know what kind of gift that is. So I'll leave it there. I hope that has given some food for thought and maybe a little bit of different way of thinking about this. So remember, our slogan is Heal, empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
